Daniel Deronda

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"You must not ask me to promise that," said Deronda, smiling. "I must be
convinced first of special reasons for it in the writings themselves. And
I am too backward a pupil yet. That blent* transmission must go on without
any choice of ours; but what we can't hinder must not make our rule for
what we ought to choose. I think our duty is faithful tradition where we
can attain it. And so you would insist for any one but yourself. Don't ask
me to deny my spiritual parentage, when I am finding the clue of my life
in the recognition of natural parentage."

"I will ask for no promise till you see the reason," said Mordecai. "You
have said the truth: I would obey the Master's rule for another. But for
years my hope, nay, my confidence, has been, not that the imperfect image
of my thought, which is an ill-shaped work of the youthful carver who has
seen a heavenly pattern, and trembles in imitating the vision--not that
this should live, but that my vision and passion should enter into yours--
yea, into yours; for he whom I longed for afar, was he not you whom I
discerned as mine when you came near? Nevertheless, you shall judge. For
my soul is satisfied." Mordecai paused, and then began in a changed tone,
reverting to previous suggestions from Deronda's disclosure: "What moved
your parents----?" but he immediately checked himself, and added, "Nay, I
ask not that you should tell me aught concerning others, unless it is your
pleasure."

"Some time--gradually--you will know all," said Deronda. "But now tell me
more about yourselves, and how the time has passed since I went away. I am
sure there has been some trouble. Mirah has been in distress about
something."

He looked at Mirah, but she immediately turned to her brother, appealing
to him to give the difficult answer. She hoped he would not think it
necessary to tell Deronda the facts about her father on such an evening as
this. Just when Deronda had brought himself so near, and identified
himself with her brother, it was cutting to her that he should hear of
this disgrace clinging about them, which seemed to have become partly his.
To relieve herself she rose to take up her hat and cloak, thinking she
would go to her own room: perhaps they would speak more easily when she
had left them. But meanwhile Mordecai said--

"To day there has been a grief. A duty which seemed to have gone far into
the distance, has come back and turned its face upon us, and raised no
gladness--has raised a dread that we must submit to. But for the moment we
are delivered from any visible yoke. Let us defer speaking of it as if
this evening which is deepening about us were the beginning of the
festival in which we must offer the first fruits of our joy, and mingle no
mourning with them."

Deronda divined the hinted grief, and left it in silence, rising as he saw
Mirah rise, and saying to her, "Are you going? I must leave almost
immediately--when I and Mrs. Adam have mounted the precious chest, and I
have delivered the key to Mordecai--no, Ezra,--may I call him Ezra now? I
have learned to think of him as Ezra since I have heard you call him so."

"Please call him Ezra," said Mirah, faintly, feeling a new timidity under
Deronda's glance and near presence. Was there really something different
about him, or was the difference only in her feeling? The strangely
various emotions of the last few hours had exhausted her; she was faint
with fatigue and want of food. Deronda, observing her pallor and
tremulousness, longed to show more feeling, but dared not. She put out her
hand with an effort to smile, and then he opened the door for her. That
was all.

A man of refined pride shrinks from making a lover's approaches to a woman
whose wealth or rank might make them appear presumptuous or low-motived;
but Deronda was finding a more delicate difficulty in a position which,
superficially taken, was the reverse of that--though to an ardent
reverential love, the loved woman has always a kind of wealth and rank
which makes a man keenly susceptible about the aspect of his addresses.
Deronda's difficulty was what any generous man might have felt in some
degree; but it affected him peculiarly through his imaginative sympathy
with a mind in which gratitude was strong. Mirah, he knew, felt herself
bound to him by deep obligations, which to her sensibilities might give
every wish of his the aspect of a claim; and an inability to fulfill it
would cause her a pain continually revived by their inevitable communion
in care of Ezra. Here were fears not of pride only, but of extreme
tenderness. Altogether, to have the character of a benefactor seemed to
Deronda's anxiety an insurmountable obstacle to confessing himself a
lover, unless in some inconceivable way it could be revealed to him that
Mirah's heart had accepted him beforehand. And the agitation on his own
account, too, was not small.

Even a man who has practised himself in love-making till his own glibness
has rendered him sceptical, may at last be overtaken by the lover's awe--
may tremble, stammer, and show other signs of recovered sensibility no
more in the range of his acquired talents than pins and needles after
numbness: how much more may that energetic timidity possess a man whose
inward history has cherished his susceptibilities instead of dulling them,
and has kept all the language of passion fresh and rooted as the lovely
leafage about the hill-side spring!

As for Mirah her dear head lay on its pillow that night with its former
suspicions thrown out of shape but still present, like an ugly story which
had been discredited but not therefore dissipated. All that she was
certain of about Deronda seemed to prove that he had no such fetters upon
him as she had been allowing herself to believe in. His whole manner as
well as his words implied that there were no hidden bonds remaining to
have any effect in determining his future. But notwithstanding this
plainly reasonable inference, uneasiness still clung about Mirah's heart.
Deronda was not to blame, but he had an importance for Mrs. Grandcourt
which must give her some hold on him. And the thought of any close
confidence between them stirred the little biting snake that had long lain
curled and harmless in Mirah's gentle bosom.

But did she this evening feel as completely as before that her jealousy
was no less remote from any possibility for herself personally than if her
human soul had been lodged in the body of a fawn that Deronda had saved
from the archers? Hardly. Something indefinable had happened and made a
difference. The soft warm rain of blossoms which had fallen just where she
was--did it really come because she was there? What spirit was there among
the boughs?

CHAPTER LXIV.

"Questa montagna e tale,
Che sempre al cominciar di sotto a grave.
E quanto uom piu va su e men fa male."
--DANTE: _Il Purgatorio_.

It was not many days after her mother's arrival that Gwendolen would
consent to remain at Genoa. Her desire to get away from that gem of the
sea, helped to rally her strength and courage. For what place, though it
were the flowery vale of Enna, may not the inward sense turn into a circle
of punishment where the flowers are no better than a crop of flame-tongues
burning the soles of our feet?

"I shall never like to see the Mediterranean again," said Gwendolen, to
her mother, who thought that she quite understood her child's feeling
--even in her tacit prohibition of any express reference to her late
husband.

Mrs. Davilow, indeed, though compelled formally to regard this time as one
of severe calamity, was virtually enjoying her life more than she had ever
done since her daughter's marriage. It seemed that her darling was brought
back to her not merely with all the old affection, but with a conscious
cherishing of her mother's nearness, such as we give to a possession that
we have been on the brink of losing.

"Are you there, mamma?" cried Gwendolen, in the middle of the night (a bed
had been made for her mother in the same room with hers), very much as she
would have done in her early girlhood, if she had felt frightened in lying
awake.

"Yes, dear; can I do anything for you?"

"No, thank you; only I like so to know you are there. Do you mind my
waking you?" (This question would hardly have been Gwendolen's in her
early girlhood.)

"I was not asleep, darling."

"It seemed not real that you were with me. I wanted to make it real. I can
bear things if you are with me. But you must not lie awake, anxious about
me. You must be happy now. You must let me make you happy now at last--
else what shall I do?"

"God bless you, dear; I have the best happiness I can have, when you make
much of me."

But the next night, hearing that she was sighing and restless Mrs. Davilow
said, "Let me give you your sleeping-draught, Gwendolen."

"No, mamma, thank you; I don't want to sleep."

"It would be so good for you to sleep more, my darling."

"Don't say what would be good for me, mamma," Gwendolen answered,
impetuously. "You don't know what would be good for me. You and my uncle
must not contradict me and tell me anything is good for me when I feel it
is not good."

Mrs. Davilow was silent, not wondering that the poor child was irritable.
Presently Gwendolen said--

"I was always naughty to you, mamma."

"No, dear, no."

"Yes, I was," said Gwendolen insistently. "It is because I was always
wicked that I am miserable now."

She burst into sobs and cries. The determination to be silent about all
the facts of her married life and its close, reacted in these escapes of
enigmatic excitement.

But dim lights of interpretation were breaking on the mother's mind
through the information that came from Sir Hugo to Mr. Gascoigne, and,
with some omissions, from Mr. Gascoigne to herself. The good-natured
baronet, while he was attending to all decent measures in relation to his
nephew's death, and the possible washing ashore of the body, thought it
the kindest thing he could do to use his present friendly intercourse with
the rector as an opportunity for communicating with him, in the mildest
way, the purport of Grandcourt's will, so as to save him the additional
shock that would be in store for him if he carried his illusions all the
way home. Perhaps Sir Hugo would have been communicable enough without
that kind motive, but he really felt the motive. He broke the unpleasant
news to the rector by degrees: at first he only implied his fear that the
widow was not so splendidly provided for as Mr. Gascoigne, nay, as the
baronet himself had expected; and only at last, after some previous vague
reference to large claims on Grandcourt, he disclosed the prior relations
which, in the unfortunate absence of a legitimate heir, had determined all
the splendor in another direction.

The rector was deeply hurt, and remembered, more vividly than he had ever
done before, how offensively proud and repelling the manners of the
deceased had been toward him--remembered also that he himself, in that
interesting period just before the arrival of the new occupant at Diplow,
had received hints of former entangling dissipations, and an undue
addiction to pleasure, though he had not foreseen that the pleasure which
had probably, so to speak, been swept into private rubbish-heaps, would
ever present itself as an array of live caterpillars, disastrous to the
green meat of respectable people. But he did not make these retrospective
thoughts audible to Sir Hugo, or lower himself by expressing any
indignation on merely personal grounds, but behaved like a man of the
world who had become a conscientious clergyman. His first remark was--

"When a young man makes his will in health, he usually counts on living a
long while. Probably Mr. Grandcourt did not believe that this will would
ever have its present effect." After a moment, he added, "The effect is
painful in more ways than one. Female morality is likely to suffer from
this marked advantage and prominence being given to illegitimate
offspring."

"Well, in point of fact," said Sir Hugo, in his comfortable way, "since
the boy is there, this was really the best alternative for the disposal of
the estates. Grandcourt had nobody nearer than his cousin. And it's a
chilling thought that you go out of this life only for the benefit of a
cousin. A man gets a little pleasure in making his will, if it's for the
good of his own curly heads; but it's a nuisance when you're giving the
bequeathing to a used-up fellow like yourself, and one you don't care two
straws for. It's the next worse thing to having only a life interest in
your estates. No; I forgive Grandcourt for that part of his will. But,
between ourselves, what I don't forgive him for, is the shabby way he has
provided for your niece--_our_ niece, I will say--no better a position
than if she had been a doctor's widow. Nothing grates on me more than that
posthumous grudgingness toward a wife. A man ought to have some pride and
fondness for his widow. _I_ should, I know. I take it as a test of a man,
that he feels the easier about his death when he can think of his wife and
daughters being comfortable after it. I like that story of the fellows in
the Crimean war, who were ready to go to the bottom of the sea if their
widows were provided for."

"It has certainly taken me by surprise," said Mr. Gascoigne, "all the more
because, as the one who stood in the place of father to my niece, I had
shown my reliance on Mr. Grandcourt's apparent liberality in money matters
by making no claims for her beforehand. That seemed to me due to him under
the circumstances. Probably you think me blamable."

"Not blamable exactly. I respect a man for trusting another. But take my
advice. If you marry another niece, though it may be to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, bind him down. Your niece can't be married for the first time
twice over. And if he's a good fellow, he'll wish to be bound. But as to
Mrs. Grandcourt, I can only say that I feel my relation to her all the
nearer because I think that she has not been well treated. And I hope you
will urge her to rely on me as a friend."

Thus spake the chivalrous Sir Hugo, in his disgust at the young and
beautiful widow of a Mallinger Grandcourt being left with only two
thousand a year and a house in a coal-mining district. To the rector that
income naturally appeared less shabby and less accompanied with mortifying
privations; but in this conversation he had devoured a much keener sense
than the baronet's of the humiliation cast over his niece, and also over
her nearest friends, by the conspicuous publishing of her husband's
relation to Mrs. Glasher. And like all men who are good husbands and
fathers, he felt the humiliation through the minds of the women who would
be chiefly affected by it; so that the annoyance of first hearing the
facts was far slighter than what he felt in communicating them to Mrs.
Davilow, and in anticipating Gwendolen's feeling whenever her mother saw
fit to tell her of them. For the good rector had an innocent conviction
that his niece was unaware of Mrs. Glasher's existence, arguing with
masculine soundness from what maidens and wives were likely to know, do,
and suffer, and having had a most imperfect observation of the particular
maiden and wife in question. Not so Gwendolen's mother, who now thought
that she saw an explanation of much that had been enigmatic in her child's
conduct and words before and after her engagement, concluding that in some
inconceivable way Gwendolen had been informed of this left-handed marriage
and the existence of the children. She trusted to opportunities that would
arise in moments of affectionate confidence before and during their
journey to England, when she might gradually learn how far the actual
state of things was clear to Gwendolen, and prepare her for anything that
might be a disappointment. But she was spared from devices on the subject.

"I hope you don't expect that I am going to be rich and grand, mamma,"
said Gwendolen, not long after the rector's communication; "perhaps I
shall have nothing at all."

She was dressed, and had been sitting long in quiet meditation. Mrs.
Davilow was startled, but said, after a moment's reflection--

"Oh yes, dear, you will have something. Sir Hugo knows all about the
will."

"That will not decide," said Gwendolen, abruptly.

"Surely, dear: Sir Hugo says you are to have two thousand a year and the
house at Gadsmere."

"What I have will depend on what I accept," said Gwendolen. "You and my
uncle must not attempt to cross me and persuade me about this. I will do
everything I can do to make you happy, but in anything about my husband I
must not be interfered with. Is eight hundred a year enough for you,
mamma?"

"More than enough, dear. You must not think of giving me so much." Mrs.
Davilow paused a little, and then said, "Do you know who is to have the
estates and the rest of the money?"

"Yes," said Gwendolen, waving her hand in dismissal of the subject. "I
know everything. It is all perfectly right, and I wish never to have it
mentioned."

The mother was silent, looked away, and rose to fetch a fan-screen, with a
slight flush on her delicate cheeks. Wondering, imagining, she did not
like to meet her daughter's eyes, and sat down again under a sad
constraint. What wretchedness her child had perhaps gone through, which
yet must remain as it always had been, locked away from their mutual
speech. But Gwendolen was watching her mother with that new divination
which experience had given her; and in tender relenting at her own
peremptoriness, said, "Come and sit nearer to me, mamma, and don't be
unhappy."

Mrs. Davilow did as she was told, but bit her lips in the vain attempt to
hinder smarting tears. Gwendolen leaned toward her caressingly and said,
"I mean to be very wise; I do, really. And good--oh, so good to you, dear,
old, sweet mamma, you won't know me. Only you must not cry."

The resolve that Gwendolen had in her mind was that she would ask Deronda
whether she ought to accept any of her husband's money--whether she might
accept what would enable her to provide for her mother. The poor thing
felt strong enough to do anything that would give her a higher place in
Deronda's mind.

An invitation that Sir Hugo pressed on her with kind urgency was that she
and Mrs. Davilow should go straight with him to Park Lane, and make his
house their abode as long as mourning and other details needed attending
to in London. Town, he insisted, was just then the most retired of places;
and he proposed to exert himself at once in getting all articles belonging
to Gwendolen away from the house in Grosvenor Square. No proposal could
have suited her better than this of staying a little while in Park Lane.
It would be easy for her there to have an interview with Deronda, if she
only knew how to get a letter into his hands, asking him to come to her.
During the journey, Sir Hugo, having understood that she was acquainted
with the purport of her husband's will, ventured to talk before her and to
her about her future arrangements, referring here and there to mildly
agreeable prospects as matters of course, and otherwise shedding a
decorous cheerfulness over her widowed position. It seemed to him really
the more graceful course for a widow to recover her spirits on finding
that her husband had not dealt as handsomely by her as he might have done;
it was the testator's fault if he compromised all her grief at his
departure by giving a testamentary reason for it, so that she might be
supposed to look sad, not because he had left her, but because he had left
her poor. The baronet, having his kindliness doubly fanned by the
favorable wind on his fortunes and by compassion for Gwendolen, had become
quite fatherly in his behavior to her, called her "my dear," and in
mentioning Gadsmere to Mr. Gascoigne, with its various advantages and
disadvantages, spoke of what "we" might do to make the best of that
property. Gwendolen sat by in pale silence while Sir Hugo, with his face
turned toward Mrs. Davilow or Mr. Gascoigne, conjectured that Mrs.
Grandcourt might perhaps prefer letting Gadsmere to residing there during
any part of the year, in which case he thought that it might be leased on
capital terms to one of the fellows engaged with the coal: Sir Hugo had
seen enough of the place to know that it was as comfortable and
picturesque a box as any man need desire, providing his desires were
circumscribed within a coal area.

"_I_ shouldn't mind about the soot myself," said the baronet, with that
dispassionateness which belongs to the potential mood. "Nothing is more
healthy. And if one's business lay there, Gadsmere would be a paradise. It
makes quite a feature in Scrogg's history of the county, with the little
tower and the fine piece of water--the prettiest print in the book."

"A more important place than Offendene, I suppose?" said Mr. Gascoigne.

"Much," said the baronet, decisively. "I was there with my poor brother--
it is more than a quarter of a century ago, but I remember it very well.
The rooms may not be larger, but the grounds are on a different scale."

"Our poor dear Offendene is empty after all," said Mrs. Davilow. "When it
came to the point, Mr. Haynes declared off, and there has been no one to
take it since. I might as well have accepted Lord Brackenshaw's kind offer
that I should remain in it another year rent-free: for I should have kept
the place aired and warmed."

"I hope you've something snug instead," said Sir Hugo.

"A little too snug," said Mr. Gascoigne, smiling at his sister-in-law.
"You are rather thick upon the ground."

Gwendolen had turned with a changed glance when her mother spoke of
Offendene being empty. This conversation passed during one of the long
unaccountable pauses often experienced in foreign trains at some country
station. There was a dreamy, sunny stillness over the hedgeless fields
stretching to the boundary of poplars; and to Gwendolen the talk within
the carriage seemed only to make the dreamland larger with an indistinct
region of coal-pits, and a purgatorial Gadsmere which she would never
visit; till at her mother's words, this mingled, dozing view seemed to
dissolve and give way to a more wakeful vision of Offendene and Pennicote
under their cooler lights. She saw the gray shoulders of the downs, the
cattle-specked fields, the shadowy plantations with rutted lanes where the
barked timber lay for a wayside seat, the neatly-clipped hedges on the
road from the parsonage to Offendene, the avenue where she was gradually
discerned from the window, the hall-door opening, and her mother or one of
the troublesome sisters coming out to meet her. All that brief experience
of a quiet home which had once seemed a dullness to be fled from, now came
back to her as a restful escape, a station where she found the breath of
morning and the unreproaching voice of birds after following a lure
through a long Satanic masquerade, which she had entered on with an
intoxicated belief in its disguises, and had seen the end of in shrieking
fear lest she herself had become one of the evil spirits who were dropping
their human mummery and hissing around her with serpent tongues.

In this way Gwendolen's mind paused over Offendene and made it the scene
of many thoughts; but she gave no further outward sign of interest in this
conversation, any more than in Sir Hugo's opinion on the telegraphic cable
or her uncle's views of the Church Rate Abolition Bill. What subjects will
not our talk embrace in leisurely day-journeying from Genoa to London? Even
strangers, after glancing from China to Peru and opening their mental
stores with a liberality threatening a mutual impression of poverty on any
future meeting, are liable to become excessively confidential. But the
baronet and the rector were under a still stronger pressure toward
cheerful communication: they were like acquaintances compelled to a long
drive in a mourning-coach who having first remarked that the occasion is a
melancholy one, naturally proceed to enliven it by the most miscellaneous
discourse. "I don't mind telling _you_," said Sir Hugo to the rector, in
mentioning some private details; while the rector, without saying so, did
not mind telling the baronet about his sons, and the difficulty of placing
them in the world. By the dint of discussing all persons and things within
driving-reach of Diplow, Sir Hugo got himself wrought to a pitch of
interest in that former home, and of conviction that it was his pleasant
duty to regain and strengthen his personal influence in the neighborhood,
that made him declare his intention of taking his family to the place for
a month or two before the autumn was over; and Mr. Gascoigne cordially
rejoiced in that prospect. Altogether, the journey was continued and ended
with mutual liking between the male fellow-travellers.

Meanwhile Gwendolen sat by like one who had visited the spirit-world and
was full to the lips of an unutterable experience that threw a strange
unreality over all the talk she was hearing of her own and the world's
business; and Mrs. Davilow was chiefly occupied in imagining what her
daughter was feeling, and in wondering what was signified by her hinted
doubt whether she would accept her husband's bequest. Gwendolen in fact
had before her the unsealed wall of an immediate purpose shutting off
every other resolution. How to scale the wall? She wanted again to see and
consult Deronda, that she might secure herself against any act he would
disapprove. Would her remorse have maintained its power within her, or
would she have felt absolved by secrecy, if it had not been for that outer
conscience which was made for her by Deronda? It is hard to say how much
we could forgive ourselves if we were secure from judgment by another
whose opinion is the breathing-medium of all our joy--who brings to us
with close pressure and immediate sequence that judgment of the Invisible
and Universal which self-flattery and the world's tolerance would easily
melt and disperse. In this way our brother may be in the stead of God to
us, and his opinion which has pierced even to the joints and marrow, may
be our virtue in the making. That mission of Deronda to Gwendolen had
begun with what she had felt to be his judgment of her at the gaming-
table. He might easily have spoiled it:--much of our lives is spent in
marring our own influence and turning others' belief in us into a widely
concluding unbelief which they call knowledge of the world, while it is
really disappointment in you or me. Deronda had not spoiled his mission.